Cognitive development: The theory of Jean Piaget

Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long- term of changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and studied an account of how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.

The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses.   

Piaget's Key Ideas

Schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions and abstract (i.e. theoretical) concepts.

When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e. a state of cognitive (i.e. mental) balance.

Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development, and described how they were developed or acquired. A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed. 

A child's cognitive development is about a child developing or constructing a mental model of the world.

Imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world.  It would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your past experience, or to plan future actions.

To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment. Jean Piaget was interested both in how children learnt and in how they thought.

We as future teachers need to understand that children learn better when they are involved in the teaching-learning process, and this can be achieved it if we permit them to know and construct their own knowledge through act on object. Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment.  This provides them knowledge of those objects. This process enables the child to form schema, but it does not mean what child will do what he wants .The teacher should be able to evaluate the level of the child's development, so suitable tasks can be set. The instruction should be individualized as much as possible  in order  children have more  opportunities to communicate with one another, so teachers become  facilitators of knowledge; they are a guide to stimulate students. Allow children to make mistakes and learn from them.